The Rainbow Connection
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: On an ordinary winter's day, Harry and Tom sit beside the lake and Harry finally gets around to explaining just what song she heard that one day so long ago. side fic to "When Harry Met Tom"


**Author's Note: A few notes, first this is a side story to "When Harry Met Tom" so if you haven't read that then this will just be... a very sappy and strange one-shot. The other is that this is NOT CANON.**

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"We're not friends," Harry and Tom were sitting by the lake in what was now pointedly winter, a day that no one else was bothering to spend outside, but this was the place they always talked, and Tom hadn't the heart to change course now.

Of course, likely they were here because Harry thought that Tom would rather be anywhere else. He'd never call her passive aggressive, she lacked the subtlety and the vindictiveness for that, but he didn't doubt that she did these small little things in the hope of driving him off.

A rather large embarrassed part of him felt that it was all rather sad that he was willing to sit here in the cold and the snow with a fellow orphan destitute mudblood. The shame, in fact, ate at him daily, but here he was all the same.

Friendship, he was finding, was a rather addicting and terrible thing. Just not terrible enough to have him running in the other direction.

"Of course not," he replied with the charming smile he knew Harry Evans loathed, "You have no friends."

"I have friends!" she shouted without thinking, before flushing, remembering where she was and who she was talking to and amended, "Well, I had friends, before I came here."

"Did you really?" Tom couldn't help but ask, because he couldn't imagine that any other place would tolerate Harry Evans' eccentricities than Hogwarts itself did.

"Yes, really," she glared, rubbing her hands together and completely forgetting that she was a witch and could use a spell to keep herself warm as Tom himself had, "I am perfectly capable of having friends… Friends that are not you, jackass."

"But are they good friends?" Tom countered, did they take her as she was, as he found himself somehow willing to do. Dark hair unpinned and flying in all curling directions, defying gravity all together, the way she smiled at anything everything, or her temper got the best of her and her lack of class came to the forefront.

"The best," Harry countered, and there was that smile, filled with warmth even in the middle of winter and seeming to bring light into her green eyes, as if forgetting where she was and who she was with.

And for a moment Tom was sad that she couldn't smile like that at him, jealous that someone else could bring her that kind of happiness, and hopelessly ashamed at himself that he would want something like that in the first place.

"So, are they your, oh what did you call it? Rainbow connection then?" Tom questioned and here her smile turned thoughtful.

"You'd think so, and sometimes I think so but… No, I don't think I've quite reached the rainbow connection yet," this seemed to bother her but not as much as Tom would have expected, there was that inexplicable faith and determination in her, bubbling up at every opportunity.

"You know, you keep bringing that song up…"

"You keep bringing that song up," Harry interjected with an indelicate snort that Tom duly ignored.

"But here I've never heard it," he finished, giving her a rather pointed look.

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head vigorously, "No, no, not a chance, I do not sing."

"Oh, come on, Harry," Tom said with a winning smile that, as always, put her rather adorably on edge, "It's only going to continue to nag at me and then I'll just have no choice but to interrupt your sulking by a frozen lake in the middle of winter."

"You already do that!"

"Yes, but I imagine if I'm properly motivated I can make it ten times worse," and that, at least, even the glaring Harry couldn't quite bring herself to disagree with.

"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes skyward as if waiting for god himself to intervene, "Fine, but you can't laugh!"

And as always, he smiled and noted, "I'll probably laugh."

"You can't laugh!" she insisted, eyes burning bright in the winter sunlight, before turning away from him as if to pretend to herself he wasn't here at all, like she was sitting on this log by the lake by herself or with one of her hypothetical friends.

Her voice was not beautiful, nor was it terrible, but somewhere in between but the simple melody did not lack for it as she started, " _Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide._ "

She seemed far away even as she sang and smiled, lips curved upward, and still not even glancing at Tom, " _So we've been told, and some choose to believe it. I know they're wrong, wait and see. Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me._ "

And how could she believe in these words that Tom himself as an eight-year-old would have scorned and scoffed at? Tom had prided himself, always prided himself, on believing in no one and nothing. Everything he earned, everything he was, he would take and make with his own two hands…

And yet, when she said it, he could almost believe her. At the very least, a part of him wanted to believe her and her ridiculous songs and sappy amount of faith in a world that she, of all people, knew was cruel.

" _Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star? Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it, and look what it's done so far._ "

Here she finally looked at him, still smiling, as if seeing more of him than even he himself had and there was something not quite pitying in her eyes but something soft and sad all the same as if he could be so much more than he was now.

More, perhaps, than even Voldemort could be.

" _What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing, and what do we think we might see? Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me._ "

She took his hands in hers, her fingers cold against his own, and for once she didn't seem to mind the idea of his skin touching hers, if only for this one strange moment, " _All of us under it's spell, we know that it's probably magic. Have you been half asleep? And have you heard voices? I've heard them calling my name. Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors? The voice might be one in the same._ "

At the expression on his face, a pained sort of half smile, she laughed and shook her head even as she finished, and though she would deny it afterwards and he might too, for this moment he knew that he was glad that she was his friend, " _I've heard it too many times to ignore it, it's something that I'm supposed to be. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me._ "

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 **Author's Note: Written for the 200th review of "When Harry Met Tom" by lilyoftheval5 who asked for a future one-shot for "When Harry Met Tom" so here we get the actual lyrics of "The Rainbow Connection" the fuel for Harry's patronus. Which, by the way, despite being a very sappy song is also a very good one.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**


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